


Meta: Vive La Difference

by Tammany



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Essay, Meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-25
Updated: 2019-08-25
Packaged: 2020-09-26 06:29:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20385184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: A meandering, middle-of-the-night essay on why I tend to write Aziraphale and Crowley as sexually active, even though I do not consider that mandatory and tend not to get very graphic.





	Meta: Vive La Difference

There they are--our lovely ineffable lads. Angel stock, the both of 'em, even if Crowley Fell. Gender optional, like power steering and leather upholstery--and it takes an effort. Some effort, at some time, be it merely the effort to activate the option or register the function or some similar minimal entry requirement. Maybe even the effort to swap out entire elements of existing physique, with exquisite investment of thought, energy, and intent. Who knows, with angels, after all?   
  
As gifted us by Neil Gaiman and the Beloved Sir Terry Pratchett (Blessed Be His Memory), angels are the perfect template for almost any gender or sexuality--and they're "hit home base at a walk shoe-ins" for ACE or Demi or celibate-and-indifferent. If I were choosing the most rigorous, limited, conservative interpretation of Aziraphale and Crowley, with my focus on the book and the book alone, I would almost certainly be writing them as such, focusing on the ecstasy of spiritual rhapsodic bonding. Even if I were being intensely severe in my interpretation of the series, I'd probably still fall back on the point that regardless of how Aziraphale and Crowley look to humans, their own reality is only established in such a way to suggest that they'd still "need to make an effort" to get themselves tangled in nasty old sex.

Let it now be noted that I am not, and seldom attempt to write those two in the most restricted, conservative, canon-hypersensitive way possible. I generally write them as sexually active in some physical sense.

Why?

A lot of reasons. Probably the simplest is that I am romantic, female, heterosexual, and always thought rather well of physical sex. It's wonderful in its own right. It's a marvelous literary metaphor for many, many other things. It drives characters a bit crazy, which is fun. So, yes--for me, it's an attractive outcome, whether our kiddos do it straight, slash, femslash, angelic-ace-ish, or what. Boring, prosaic, het human bias: I like sexy stories about lovable characters.

Second reason is related, but more abstract: I am from a culture where one of the primary assumed outcomes of emotional intimacy between mixed-gender pairs concludes in bedroom activities--and those same activities have been among the most hysterically tabooed for a long time, a fact we are only getting over. I've got a preexisting inclination to take *romance* to lead to sex, and even in the far tamer original novel, Aziraphale and Crowley are romantic. In the series, the romance is inescapable: a heavy-handed whap to the head with a clue-by-four. If, by some radical chance, you have made it to the end of six episodes without quite cluing in, the meal at the Ritz, the nightingale, and the lush, lush music leave no real doubt. This is ROMANCE, right up there with Rick and Ilsa in WWII Africa, in Casablanca. (And Sam starts on the pie-anny, fingers running up the keys, "You must remember this, a kiss is just a kiss, a sigh is just a sigh...") You've got to be made of tougher stuff than I to resist the notion of those two in lush, aching love with each other, and more creative than I am to eschew resolving that adoration with bodily entanglements--or aching resistance. ("We'll always have Tadfield...")

Then, of course, there are the actors' performances. I do not mean anything negative. I just mean that brilliant as they are, it's very hard to even imagine David Tennant and Michael Sheen playing that much intentional love and romance/bromance without adding aspects of downright sexy physicality to it. They are actors: they have three primary tools--their brains, their voices, and their bodies, and the bodies are no small element of their game. It's as difficult to believe that Aziraphale's swooning rapture over pastry or wine or oysters does not suggest a being who leans physically hedonist. As for Tennant's snake hipped, gesturing, I'm-too-sexy-for-my-shirt performance of Crowley? The idea of him never trying out all the options on his corporeal "Bentley" is as improbable as the idea he has not tested out every single option of the real mechanical Bentley. The actors evoked highly hedonistic beings--beings in love with Earth and with all things just a bit worldly.  
  
There is the term written of them from the start: that they have "gone native." That's such a dangerous, tetchy word, carrying all the scorn and disapproval of any Home Office of the Colonial Authority. Heaven and Hell do not approve, if you go native. You pick up nasty habits... local ways... unappealing vices not natural to your culture.  
  
Looking at Pratchett and Gaiman's Heaven and Hell--well, that looks a lot like sex to me. Of course it also looks like sushi, fast cars, computers, pornography, nice clothing, good theater, oysters, and good music, including Queen. But there it is: our two Celestials seem so worldly, so "gone native," that it again seems a bit odd to think of them resisting the temptation to explore just a bit more of love the way the natives do it. Even if it does take a little effort. What's a little effort in the face of eternity, after all: you've got such a long, long time to be bored, and so many reasons to try to remain interested.

And sex--so alien to them--would also, from what one sees of them, not be disgusting. Beelzebub, Hastur, Ligur; Gabriel, Michael, Sandalphon--they might be disgusted. They don't like Earth and all it's messy, physical enthusiasm. Aziraphale and Crowley, in their respective ways, like it quite a lot. One has no sense of them as being so alien to Earth that they are bewildered or scandalized or repelled by the vast population of humans out there fornicating like life was an eternal Christmas office party.   
  
I mean, come on--Aziraphale possesses Madam Tracy--and neither one's head explodes. Indeed, those two really appear to understand each other surprisingly well, all said and done.  
  
Then there are the abstract reasons: that by intent, accident, serendipity, and design, we've been handed a simply beautiful pairing to explore all kinds of sexuality within the fair outer limits of canon, in a positive, loving relationship.   
  
How often do we get that, people? A pair who may bicker and quarrel and misunderstand each other and be theoretically each others' nemeses, true adversaries to the bitter end--but who in fact appear to understand each other quite well, forgive each other at a moment's notice, care for each other deeply, and adore each other to the very core. They've been handed to us, screwed up in so many ways, facing so many challenges, but fully and completely convincing as ineffably, totally, karmically in love, and quite good at it. In that framing, we've been as good as told that their bodies are optional, malleable, adaptable, with a fully functional-even super-functional sensory array. They can perform as humans, and perhaps even as super humans. They CAN be male, female, mythic, whatever, if they make the effort, and check the "sex optional" box on the corporeal order form. And given the physical natures of Tennant and Sheen, it does take a certain act of willing suspension of disbelieve to even try to convince ones' self that they have not both long since at least activated the sexuality functions. Aziraphale may be a rather flighty man--but he reads as a man, and one doesn't honestly believe his trousers are empty. Tennant, presenting Crowley as female (during the Crucifixion and as Nanny Ash) may be a touch panto--but he's also a surprisingly attractive woman--and he never reads as lacking the equipment you'd expect to find in a human's knickers. We have been given two character who canonically can be written as anything-in-love, are in fact perhaps most canonical when written as exceeding their original operating limits and activating all the functions and exploring the Earth Sex Stuff, and whose author, Gaiman, has as good as said, "That's not 'Written' but it's logically possible. Have at it--learn whatever you like from the writing."  
  
Of course I write them as sexually entangled. I also write them occasionally as ACE, or angelically/spiritually entangled, but physically abstaining. But, when push comes to shove (as it does in sexy fanfics) I am what I am, and they are what they are, and the options they present canonically and with the blessings of Gaiman are just too fascinating and delightful. They are the first pairing that has honestly lured me to plan some femslash for them. They are the first officially slashy same-sex mating I have EVER been tempted to then shift around into mixed-sex pairing...because they can. Because it's not alien to them. Because all gender pairings are equally available to them, without gender taboo or gender rules or any of the things that might make presenting them out of gender an affront to their own natural dignity. Even more intriguing, because they are what they are--not actually any gender/sexuality, while potentially every gender/sexuality, I can do things like run them with other, more defined characters, and allow the angelic/demonic ambiguity and fluidity to affect character who might otherwise never waver in their response to their own true sexual north star.   
  
I can explore ideas: if you can change bodies, do you have one you prefer--who is YOU? If so, what do you feel if other people prefer your other forms? Would it be like having a spouse who only wants you if you dress a particular way? Like being an actor whose fans fall in love with your roles, and confuse that with loving you? Would you resent it if society found some of your forms admirable--and others repulsive or socially inferior? Would you look at one form and think, "Oh, this one's hot, like the perfect little black dress," and of another, "That schmatte--I wouldn't give a dog an enema in that body!"  
  
What is sexual identity when it's optional, fluid, changing, but your soul is not?  
  
What is love, when the sexuality aspect is not tangled in permanence? Or age? Or death in the general run of things? What if sex becomes a game you can play, with few if any consequences?   
  
Of course I write our boys as sexual: they offer too many brilliant reasons for doing so. Too many fascinating ideas I would like to try out. So amazing--such lovable, flawed characters, so well presented as already in deepest romance, with so many years before them and so many behind them--and again, so in love. So very in love.  
  
I'd have to be dead not to want to write them as sexual a lot of the time! Not all the time. Never all the time. But an awful lot of the time. It's too good to walk away from.  
  
And that's a set of my reasons for writing Aziraphale and Crowley as sexually involved. No reason anyone has to do likewise: indeed, I can see many reasons not to, and some of those versions also call me. It's just--it is such a sweetheart of a pairing, offering so many positive, happy reasons to go for it. So--whatever you do with them, bless and enjoy. I'll be over in my corner, finding new ideas of sexual, ace, demi, slash, straight, pan sexual Aziraphale and Crowley to write. Because I not only can, but I can do so in a positive, happy framing, with fascinating and thought-provoking results.


End file.
